Katie Roiphe’s article is out in Harper’s. Why yes she IS reveling in her victimhood. Which is ironic considering that her whole thrust is that the #MeToo movement is turning women into victims with no agency. She, of course, is different. Her victimhood is earned with death threats from Twitter!

Ok I’m being snide. But her article reads like a David Brooks column. She creates a false question specifically to knock it down. Spending many lines presenting tweets that she insists show the “real” face of #MeToo which she thinks is all about gleefully destroying men who aren’t really that bad! All those celebratory tweets are clear indicators that women are vicious harpies out to slay any man who even appeared near the Shitty Media Men list. Then there are the tweets suggesting castration or murder which she feels just show how out of hand all we hysterical women are. Imagine! Someone is advocating violence against men! Oh the horror. (Somehow even her death threats fall into this category because she is the defender of the righteous I guess?)

I am not saying that the #MeToo movement is enshrined in sainthood. Or that there aren’t plenty of conversations to be had about how people interact with each other and lessons that need be learned. These conversations are difficult and painful and expose parts of ourselves that we’d probably not want others to see. But these are the conversations that change the status quo. People like Katie Roiphe, by casting the #MeToo movement as a petty vengeful middle school burn book rife with nasty gossip, are making it easy for those conversations to get shut down or never happen.

I guarantee someone is right now rolling their eyes and saying, “yes yes, all men are predators and should be castrated, we get it sweetie.” They’ll point to Katie Roiphe’s article triumphantly because if women are against it then they are safe in condemning and ignoring it. Is that a bit hyperbolic? Maybe. But based on past attitudes most of us harpies would be completely unsurprised.